Titanic Anniversary: Commenters Remember Their Family Legends

In February, the grandson of a violinist hired to play on the Titanic shared a David and Goliath story with readers of The Huffington Post. While researching a book on the aftermath of his grandfather, Jack Hume's, death, Christopher Ward uncovered a little-told story of corporate negligence starring the parent company behind the "unsinkable ship," the White Star Line, and the families of the dead, who paid White Star for everything from body shipment to the brass buttons on their loved ones' company uniforms, according to Ward.

Our commenters were moved by the piece along almost uniform lines (a rare occurrence in the freedom of speech testing grounds that is an online comments section), and tucked in amidst their expressions of outrage at the story and gratitude to the story-teller were tales pulled from their own vaults, of ancestors who shared Hume's fate or missed it by twists of fate. The family legends come from across the globe, a testament to how truly transcontinental the scope of the tragedy was, in the way of wars. As part of our coverage of the 100-year-anniversary of the crash, we've collected the best of those comments in the slideshow below. Read on by clicking through.